Prime Minister Joseph Muscat chose to send Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis in his stead for a Broadcasting Authority press conference to be shown on PBS this evening.

It is the first time that a Prime Minister opted out of a televised press event in the run-up to an election campaign. Opposition leader Simon Busuttil took part in a similar press conference on Monday.

But an embattled prime minister, at the centre of a magisterial investigation involving his wife and two others involving his chief of staff, has decided to pass the buck to one of his closest allies, instead of facing the music himself.

The BA press conference is to be recorded this afternoon, with the participation of The Malta Independent, PBS, Il-Mument, Net News and RTK, and will be shown this evening at prime time.

Muscat has been turning down invitations to be interviewed by the independent media for quite a while. The Malta Independent invited him to take part in its online programme INDEPTH in February, but he refused. A similar invitation was made to him for a programme during the election campaign, and, with 9 days to go till the end of the campaign, he is still to give an answer.

He has also failed to answer to an invitation that was made to him to participate in a leaders’ debate planned by The Malta Independent, The Times and MaltaToday.

Simon Busuttil had already accepted the invitation for this debate, and he has also accepted to be interviewed by the individual newspapers.